SOURCE: Fool.com

Some commercial real estate business is stirring again. The deals seem to be starting small, but never-the-less they are happening.

"Until a couple of transactions settled, you didn’t have a floor in the market," says Jeff Pacy, a broker with Preston Partners in Lutherville, MD.

According to Pacy and other commercial real estate insiders outside of Baltimore, they are seeing a "sudden burst of business." For commercial property under $10M, the pricing now seems to be right. Institutional buyers are also treading softly back into commercial property from the sidelines.

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SOURCE: DallasNews.com

Commercial real estate values are continuing their downward spiral, dropping 8.6 percent in April, according to a report released Wednesday by Moody's Investors Services and Real Estate Analytics.

That's the largest one-month nationwide decline on record.

And the Southern region of the U.S., which includes Texas, is seeing the worst declines. Prices for investment properties in the Southern sector of the country are off more than 20 percent in the last year, Moody's researchers said.

U.S. commercial real estate values are down 29.5 percent from their peak in late 2007.

The biggest declines have come in the office sector, where prices are down about 29 percent nationwide from a year ago. And shopping center values have fallen 18.5 percent.

Another recent commercial property report predicts that the Dallas area will have the largest decline in office prices in the country during the coming year. That forecast last week by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the commercial real estate market won't begin to recover until 2011.

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SOURCE: CoStar

Although the future of commercial real estate remains murky, current operating conditions are crystal clear: There is very limited capital, extremely tighter underwriting, shrinking net operating incomes, shrinking space demand and declining property values. For companies today, that means leaner and more efficient operations and more focus on tenant retention rather than tenant attraction.

The bigger question may be how long will these current conditions remain in effect. And while they are far different than what conditions were just three years ago, the smart money is starting to act as if it expects the current operating environment will be in effect for some time and is starting to look for opportunities that match the times.

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